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BY ABBY FOX
Xiaotian (Dennis) Wu seems to like everything he’s good at, and is good at everything he tries.
The sixteen-year-old junior at Rocky Hill School, and an East Greenwich resident since he started his freshman year there, last Thursday won the American Mathematical Society’s “Who Wants to Be a Mathematician?” contest at Providence College, competing against the eight other qualifying students in the state.
Modeled after “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, the game resembles the TV show, from the wiseacre host and the cheering audience, to the one “lifeline” that contestants are allowed, where they may telephone someone for help when they’re hit with a tough question. Wu walked away not only as the winner, but with $1,000, which he said he would give to his mother.
“Most of the time, they say they’ll put it in a college fund,” said Mike Breen, the host and the society’s public awareness officer. “But this is the first time anyone had already promised it to their mother. He’s a pretty nice guy.”
Math teacher Terry Coes, who served as Wu’s “lifeline” in the game, is similarly wowed by his advanced student.
“He’s a great kid,” he concurred. “What impresses me is his capacity for work.”
Wu works in just about every aspect of the high school experience and the after-school experience, from politics with General Treasurer Frank Caprio, to health care, at Kent Hospital and St. Elizabeth Home.
Then there are the arts. He loves the theater, having played Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Doll,” and Mortimer (the Cary Grant character in the movie) in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” at Rocky Hill, for instance, and had the starring role in “The King and I” – his first role, ever – at Deering Middle School in West Warwick.
Since the first grade, Wu has been a classical pianist; and in fact, over the weekend, he earned second place in the URI extravaganza. He’s president of the state Chopin Club, which Wu said is the second oldest music club in the country. He can sing, too.
An accomplished math man, Wu is taking calculus III and computer programming at CCRI, and AP Statistics at Rocky Hill; he got pre-calculus out of the way his freshman year. “I owe a lot to studying a lot of math and having an interest in it,” he said. “You naturally get better if you love something.”
Wu can also play sports: tennis in the spring, cross country in the fall, and a little basketball.
“The hardest thing for me to say is ‘No,’” he said.
Clearly, “He can be involved in several different things and he never gets flustered,” Coes said. “He seems to carry on and he always has a smile on his face.”
Perhaps most crucially in his biography, Wu is also the eldest child of Weilang Wu and Yao Dian -- they are where Wu’s success started. Wu’s father is a marine engineer, who moved the family to Canada, then to the United States, because of his work; and his mother has experience as a nurse and a teacher, with a master’s in business administration to boot. These days, her full-time job is her three children.
“It was always my mom and dad constantly motivating me,” Wu said. “I owe a lot to my parents. My parents are into education and want the best for their children.” His younger siblings, a 10-year-old brother and a nine-year-old sister attending Hanaford School, are following in his footsteps, both musically and academically. “My brother looks up to me and is always trying to do better than me,” he said. “And that’s good.”
Wu, who doesn’t pull all-nighters as a general rule and swears by his eight hours of sleep, joked that if he even tries to stay up with his work until 11 or midnight, “My mom will stay up with me, and say, “You have to go to bed.” No matter what activity he does after school, “After a good night’s sleep, it’s all recovered,” he said.
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Last Thursday’s winnings at the math match “is all owed to the previous experience I’ve had,” Wu said.
Being born and raised in Shanghai, China, then moving to Singapore, and after that, Yantai, China, then Vancouver, Canada, and finally to Rhode Island, “I’ve moved around so much, and had so many different types of education,” he said. “I love every place I’ve been so far.” And he’s felt a lot of support in America, from a teacher at Deering named Mrs. Zambuco, who likes to mail him encouraging cards, to Coes, who doesn’t hide his admiration, either. “He’s a very mature kid,” Coes said.
It’s impossible to name a subject Wu doesn’t like or doesn’t want to try. He’s as comfortable speaking about his French classes and Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!” as he is about robotics, or skiing. “I’m the kind of person that likes everything,” he said. “I can find enjoyment in doing everything.” That open enthusiasm for learning must explain in part why he feels he’s not sure what he wants to study in college, or do for a career.
“He wants to be the best he can be,” Coes said. “I’m not sure what he wants to do, but he has great ambition. He has a lot of different interests. He’s going to go places, I think.”
In the heat of the math competition, after Wu faced off finally with a Mt. St. Charles Academy student and beat him, thus winning the competition, he had a shot at winning another $2,000, if he could correctly answer a tricky trigonometry question.
He didn’t, and knew he would go home with just $1,000. But Wu took it in stride.
“He seemed pretty happy,” Breen said.
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